My theory is that yes, he’s ignorant enough not to know how to pronounce corpsmen. However, I read somewhere [I don’t have the p bookmarked, so I can’t say where it was] that he typically rehearses his remarks in front of a sm group of close advisors. This is standard practice in speechmaking. The speaker needs input on various points, and especially in this case needs practice w the teleprompter.
Anyway, he most likely rehearsed his remarks before a trusted audience. I’m guessing he said corpsemen and was corrected. Malignant Narcissists don’t like to be corrected.
He probably went on to use the mispronunciation in the speech for two purposes. One, it told the person who corrected him that he knew the right pronunciation and was going w the one he wanted regardless. Kind of an in-your-face backhand, if you see what I mean.
At the same time, military-hater that he is, he got to insult the elites to their face. From their POV, he was either saying, ‘I don’t care enough about you to pronounce your branch of service correctly,’ or ‘I’m calling you murderers to your faces—you are men who do nothing more than make corpses’. Either way, an insult.
Win-win for a person as sick as Obama. Make no mistake, Malignant Narcissists are very sick ppl. It’s unbelievable that the US has come to this, that we have one as a POTUS.
Your theory rings true. Maybe he/his advisors also felt that the mispronunciation also made him seem more like the an “outsider,” more like the “underserved,” more like someone with only a basic reading level, more like the kind of people he was pretending to serve. The one thing the image too the chance of excluding was anyone who had served or had had family in the military.